Coming back in from the Cold:
reassessing translation and own
language use.
Guy Cook
Mirror Translation
•
•
•
•
•
in = if; shâ' = wish; llâh = God.
If wishes God
By the will of God
God Willing
Perhaps
in-shâa al modarris (‫‘—)إن شاء المدرس‬if the
teacher wants’
S’il vous plaît
•
•
•
•
•
If it you pleases.
If it pleases you.
If you please
Please
si le vin vous plaît (‘If you like the wine’),
etc.
“I will say that I have taken a strong stand
against any use of the L1 in an L2 classroom,
and all my TESL students know that if they ever
utter a word of Bahasa Malaysia in the
classroom I will burst into their classroom and
strangle them in front of their students.”
(Interview data, Marcia Fisk-Ong 2003)
Graham Hall and Guy Cook (2012) ‘Ownlanguage use in ELT: exploring global practices
and attitudes’ British Council ELT Research Papers.
London, British Council.
Questionnaire survey of teachers’ perceptions of ownlanguage use, from a global sample of ELT practitioners.
2,785 teachers from 111 countries
Semi-structured interviews with teachers who had completed
the surveys.
17 interviewees across a range of sectors and
countries
How did we get ….
• from….
• one kind of extremism…..
• to another?
and how do we get back….
• to a more reasonable balance?
Grammar Translation
•
•
•
•
•
dry
dull
all writing, no speaking
all accuracy, no fluency
all form, no communication
Criteria for teaching and learning
• Historical
English Language Teaching
1882
Cross lingual Teaching
(translation, L1 explanations)
Intralingual Teaching
(aka The Direct Method)
The businessman
Henry Sweet
1845-1912
The academic
Expediency, commerce and
politics
•
•
•
•
•
immigration/ travel/ business
multilingual classes
monolingual teachers
single print runs
national interests
Criteria for teaching and learning
• Historical
• ‘Scientific’
English Language Teaching
Cross lingual Teaching
(translation, L1 explanations)
1900
Intralingual Teaching
(aka The Direct Method)
Form Focus
1970
(L2 explanation
synthetic syllabus)
Meaning focus
(analytic syllabuses
natural approach,,CLT
task based teaching)
‘Scientific’ evidence
– second language acquisition theory
“How well do these analyses succeed in
generating precise predictions for
patterns in language learning? Can we
use these predictions to improve
language learning?”
(MacWhinney 2006: 734)
Problem One: What is ‘success’?
“SLA researchers seem to have
neglected the fact that the goal of
SLA is bilingualism”
Sridhar and Sridhar (1986:5)
Authentic contemporary code switching
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
mixed language partnerships
migrant families
schools
workforces
international businesses
multilingual notices and announcements
internet multiple language use
films, news
Problem Two: no research!!
“Unfortunately, empirical work on the
effect of translation exercises on L2
learners morphosyntax is scant.”
Källkvist (2008)
“To our knowledge, no research has
examined the value of contrastive FFI [Form
Focused Instruction] of vocabulary, such as
interlingual comparisons with learner’s L1, or
translation.” Laufer and Girsai (2008)
“You are right - translation is given little attention
by SLA researchers. The only exception is that
translation is sometimes used as an elicitation tool
to obtain L2 data. As such it is viewed sceptically
because it is likely to encourage L1 transfer and
thus to overstate the role this plays in L2
acquisition..”
Rod Ellis (personal communication)
Criteria for teaching and learning
• Historical
• ‘Scientific’
• Pedagogic
“Psychology and linguistics have caused a good
deal of harm by pretending to have answers to
those questions and telling teachers (...) how
they should behave. Often the ideas presented
by the scientists are totally crazy and they may
cause trouble. (...) The truth of the matter is
that about 99 percent of teaching is making the
students feel interested in the material”.
(Chomsky 1988:180-182)
www.nndb.com
“I haven't heard of any data-based L2
motivation studies that used L1 use in the
classroom as a motivational variable.”
(Zoltan Dornyei, personal communication)
English Language Teaching
Cross lingual Teaching
(translation, L1 explanations)
1900
Intralingual Teaching
(aka The Direct Method)
Form Focus
1970
2013
(L2 explanation
synthetic syllabus)
Meaning focus
(analytic syllabuses
natural approach,,CLT
task based teaching)
Own language movement
Own language movement
Graham Hall and Guy Cook. 2012. Ownlanguage use in language teaching and
learning: the state of the art. Language
Teaching. 45/3: 271-308
NATURAL, INEVITABLE
“while in the classroom the teachers try to keep
the two languages separate, the learners in their
own minds keep the two in contact.”
(Widdowson 2003:150)
REDUCING STRESS
“….putting students at ease, conveying
teacher's empathy and, in general,
creating a less threatening atmosphere.”
(Canagarajah 1999 : 132).
PROMOTING TEACHER STUDENT UNDERSTANDING
“At this point I was truly concerned about his
feelings and unconsciously switched to English,
the language that, quite frankly, was the most
‘real’ for all of us (.....) The point is that my
concern about my students as individuals, as
human beings, at times transcends my concern
for with L2 acquisition process.”
Edstrom (2006)
COMMUNICATIVE
“The research evolved from the personal experience of my
return to the foreign language classroom as an adult. (….)
This began the very first day of class when the teacher
spoke only Spanish. I felt I had walked into the second act
of a three act play, or that I had gotten into the wrong
classroom. I had enrolled in a beginning class because I
wanted to learn the language, so of course I could not
understand anything the teacher was saying, and wondering
why she acted as if I should was worrisome, making an
already stressful situation even more so. (....)
(Brooks-Lewis 2009)
PROMOTING LEARNING
•
•
•
•
•
•
confidence and organization
explicit knowledge
avoidance avoidance
not falling for faux amis
acknowledging student expertise
linking new to existing knowledge
Claimed disadvantages
• Interference/ transfer
• Lack of automaticity
• Word-for-wordism
Criteria for teaching and learning
• Historical
• ‘Scientific’
• Pedagogic
• Educational
“The reason for the large numbers of students
taking English was given frankly by a somewhat
disaffected instructor: many of the students
proposed to end up working for airlines, or banks,
in which English was worldwide lingua franca...
You learned English to use computers, respond to
orders, transmit telexes, decipher manifests, and
so forth”.
(Edward Said 1993:369)
www.nndb.com
A different world of…
•
•
•
•
multiple language use
mobile migrant multilingual populations
written internet communication
English as a lingua franca
English speakers
• 4-500 million native speakers
• 600 million second language speakers
• 500 million foreign language speakers
• PLUS
• those learning
• those with some knowledge
Crystal 2012/ Schneider 2011
“the whole earth was of
one language, and of
one speech”
“confound their
language, that
they may not
understand one
another's speech”
ledio.veseli.org
www.thosebastards.com
www.vec.ca
SAFEGUARDING IDENTITY
“We’ve been brought to this school by Mr Rosenberg, who, two days after our
arrival, tells us he’ll take us to classes that are provided by the government to
teach English to newcomers. This morning, in the rinky-dink wooden barracks
where the classes are held, we’ve acquired new names. All it takes is a brief
conference between Mr Rosenberg and the teacher, a kindly looking woman
who tries to give us reassuring glances, but who has seen too many people
come and go to get sentimental about a name. Mine - ‘Ewa’ - is easy to change
into its near equivalent in English, ‘Eva’. My sister’s name - ‘Alina’ - poses more
of a problem, but after a moment’s thought, Mr. Rosenberg and the teacher
decide that ‘Elaine’ is close enough. My sister and I hang our heads wordlessly
under this careless baptism. The teacher then introduces us to the class,
mispronouncing our last name - ‘Wydra’ - in a way we’ve never heard before.
We make our way to a bench at the back of the room; nothing much has
happened, expect a small, seismic mental shift. (….) Our Polish names didn’t
refer to us; they were as surely us as our eyes or hands. These new
appellations, which we ourselves can’t pronounce, are not us. (….) We all
walk to our seats, into a roomful of unknown faces, with names which make us
strange to ourselves”.
(Eva Hoffman 1998)
“One nation,
one people,
one language”
“One classroom,
one learner,
one language”
Direct Method
•
•
•
•
•
•
dissociates new from existing knowledge
develops only monolingual skills
hinders confidence and explicit knowledge
denies the inevitable
hinders teacher student rapport
fails to redress language imbalance
Own language use
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
has no sound scientific evidence against it
makes pedagogic sense
is relevant and useful
maintains diversity and identity
builds upon student knowledge
promotes awareness
acknowledges that languages have an
untranslatable spirit
not
•
•
•
•
overuse, or even major use
unplanned incidental occurrence
resorting to own-language use when tired
or short of time.
An alternative to extremism
• ‘judicious’ or ‘optimal’ own-language use
Macaro (1997)
• ‘appropriate’ combination Stern (1992).
• a structured and principled deployment of
the own language, Butzkamm & Caldwell
(2009: 150)
•
Brooks-Lewis, K. A. 2009. ‘Adult Learners’ Perceptions of the Incorporation of their L1 in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning.’
Applied Linguistics 30.2: 216-235.
Butzkamm, W. and J. A. W. Caldwell. 2009. The Bilingual Reform: A Paradigm Shift in Foreign Language Teaching. Tübingen: Narr
Studienbücher.
Butzkamm, W. and J. A. W. Caldwell. 2009. The Bilingual Reform: A Paradigm Shift in Foreign Language Teaching. Narr
Studienbücher.
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 1999. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, Noam 1988. Language and the Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Cook, Guy. 2010. Translation in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Cook, Vivian. 2001. ‘Using the First Language in the Classroom.’ UTP Journal 57/3: 1-14.
Deller, S. and Rinvolucri, M. 2002. Using the Mother Tongue. London: English Teaching Professional/ Delta
Edstrom, A. 2006. ‘L1 use in the L2 classroom: One teacher’s self-evaluation.’ The Canadian Modern Language Review 63(2): 275292.
Fisk Ong, Marcia 2002 Unpublished conference paper, APAC Barcelona
González Davies, M. 2004. Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom: Activities, tasks and projects. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Hall, Graham and Guy Cook (2012) ‘Own-language use in ELT: exploring global practices and attitudes’ British Council ELT
Research Papers. London, British Council.
Hall, Graham and Guy Cook. 2012 Own-language use in language teaching and learning: the state of the art. Language Teaching.
45/3: 271-308
Howatt, A.P.R. , with H.G.Widdowson. 2002. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Källkvist, M. 2008. ‘L1-L2 translation versus no translation: A longitudinal study of focus-on-formS within a meaning-focused
curriculum’ in L. Ortega and H.Byrnes (eds.). The Longitudinal Study of Advanced L2 Capacities. London: Routledge.
Laufer, B. and Girsai, N. 2008. Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary Learning: A Case for Contrastive Analysis
and Translation.
Applied Linguistics. 29(4): 694-716
Macaro, E. 1997. Target language, collaborative learning and autonomy. Multilingual Matters.
Macaro, E. 2009. 'Teacher Use of Codeswitching in the Second Language Classroom: Exploring ‘Optimal’ Use' in M. Turnbull and J.
Dailey-O’Cain (eds.): First language use in second and foreign language learning. Multilingual Matters, 35–49.
MacWhinney, Brian 2006 ‘Emergentism - use often and with care’ discussion paper Applied Linguistics Special Issue: language
Emergence 27/4 729-740
Richards Jack C. 1984 The Secret Life of Methods TESOL Quarterly 18/1: 7-23
Said, E. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. London:Vintage.
Stern, H. 1992. Issues and options in language teaching. Oxford University Press.
Turnbull, M. and J. Dailey-O’Cain (eds.) 2009. First language use in second and foreign language learning. Multilingual Matters.
Widdowson, H.G. 2003. Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford University Press